Saturday salon 31/12

In a stunning proposal that would send shockwaves through the Coalition, Hanson told me on 2GB radio on Monday that she would even consider ceding control of her party to Bernardi in order to lock in conservative voters disillusioned with the Coalition.

“I have a lot of respect for Cory, “ she said. “I’d love to work with him or join forces. If Cory wants to take over [One Nation] so be it but at the end of the day it has got to be on the issues that I want to fight for the people.”

Many of One Nation’s policies, especially its opposition to Islamic extremism, accord with views expressed by Bernardi, who was sacked from the Coalition front bench by Tony Abbott for making politically incorrect comments about same-sex marriage and has remained in exile under Malcolm Turnbull.

Bernardi has hinted at forming a breakaway party named the Australian Majority, possibly as soon as February. He was unavailable for comment yesterday, but he is unlikely to rebuff Hanson’s offer to solidify conservative support for them both, rather than splitting the vote between them.

2. Homo sapiens not very bright

A short note in the New Scientist.

People in the USA were so terrified by the twin towers going down in September 2001 that they took to the roads, rather than travel by air. The result was an average increase in the road toll by 1,100 pa for the next five years.

3. Abbott criticises pension changes

I can’t find a link, but on ABC radio I heard Tony Abbott questioning the wisdom of reducing the amount of assets old age pensioners can have, other than the family home. He felt that it was not good to penalise people who had saved a bit.

Paul Syvret, who is at times a bit Bolshie, had a piece about it in the Courier Mail (pay-walled), which was titled Bit Rich to Lecture Poor. He pointed out that Joe Hockey at one stage was claiming $270 per night from the public purse while staying in a house in Canberra which he and his wife owned.

4. Centrelink’s ‘overpayment recovery program’

Everyone who has been on the dole for part of a year back to 2010. Both my sons have had letters.

My youngest, who is a mathematician, says he thinks the computer program they are using is designed to rip people off. It equalises your income over the year and then claims you were earning more than you were while receiving benefits. They are generating 20,000 “compliance interventions” a week, up from 20,000 a year before the crackdown came into effect in July.They are accessing ATO information and automatically generating 20,000 “compliance interventions” a week, up from 20,000 a year before the crackdown came into effect in July.

‘Sarah Martin: The Turnbull government is ramping up efforts to claw back $4 billion believed to have been ­incorrectly paid to welfare recipients, issuing debt notices worth $4.5 million every day in a bid to rein in the ballooning welfare bill’

and you should get it.

No doubt there is some fraud going on, but unless you have detailed records you’ll probably end up paying, plus a 10% penalty. Senator Doug Cameron said he’d been contacted by heaps of people, including one woman who says she was being wrongfully pinged for $9,000.

Pauline Hansen is using the issue to promote the idea of an Australia card.

5. Giving is good

You don’t hear much about contemporary French intellectuals, but there is a group called Mouvement Anti-Utilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales, or MAUSS, who have dedicated themselves to a systematic attack on the philosophical underpinnings of economic theory.

It has generally been assumed that before the invention of money a market existed, with barter as the medium.

They say that in fact most objects moved back and forth as gifts. There is no evidence, they say for this tenet:

The universal assumption of free market enthusiasts, then as now, was that what essentially drives human beings is a desire to maximize their pleasures, comforts and material possessions (their “utility”), and that all significant human interactions can thus be analyzed in market terms.

That makes the ‘market’ a cultural construct rather than part of the nature of things.

Brian,
I think Centrelink will eventually buckle on this debt recovery scam, the outcry is going to be so immense. Question is, how long will that take. We might have to wait for Parliament to come back.

Gift giving trade moved a lot of stuff around Australia in pre invasion times including practical things like spear shafts and symbolic things like pearl shells. Part of the aim was cement obligations and to help maintain peace. In many cultures gift givers wanted to appear generous and powerful so diving a hard bargain was not considered smart.

We would actually save money by paying all the oldies the full pension in return for eliminating the superannuation tax benefits.
Has the added attraction of encouraging those who are now on part pensions to take some part time work, pick fruit or set up a micro business.
NOTE: I don’t get the pension and have long since finished paying into super so this change would help the Davidson’s.

My advice for Australia? Watch the policy experiments in Europe keenly. But don’t assume for one minute that universal basic income is a magic bullet. Compared to our current system, it is expensive, inefficient, and potentially regressive.

Former ALP Senate leader would have been all over this like a rash in a Senate Committee. Forensic and brutal, but necessary.
Thank you Lionel Murphy; for all your faults, the strengthening of Senate committees is a legacy we all can benefit from.

Back to a topic covered here late last year,
From Fairfax online:

Bakers Delight workers, some on $8 an hour, are being kept on an outdated contract from the unpopular WorkChoices era that drastically reduces weekend penalty rates.

Fairfax Media has obtained payslips and store rosters from Bakers Delight revealing its staff – often teenagers – are routinely being paid vastly less than the minimum award rates for working weekend shifts in bakeries across Victoria.

Yesterday my wife was in Woolies near the checkout, when the floor manager came along and told the workers that they were going to be paid two and a half times normal rate!

A good new year present for the workers.

On the Centrelink pay recovery scam, there was a segment on NewsRadio about it. It seems the problem is as outlined above. They take what you’ve earned for the year, divide by 52 and assume that’s what you were getting while on Centrelink. To call it an algorithm is just humbug. Anyone who can multiply and divide can see it’s wrong.

Victorian legal Aid has taken up the case.

There was a separate interview with Linda Birnie, who was very clear. It’s a systemic error, and Centrelink should cease forthwith until it is sorted.

Part of the problem is that they give you very little time to prove your innocence, then they send in the debt collectors. Thugs to suck blood from the vulnerable masses.

Legal Aid Victoria, the Australian privacy foundation, the Australian council for social service, and independent Andrew Wilkie have all raised serious concerns, urging the human services minister, Alan Tudge, to intervene.

And:

The Australian Privacy Foundation described the system as a “clusterfuck”, that wrongly assumed the initial data matching was accurate and then abandoned procedural fairness.

“There’s so much that can go wrong here that it’s astounding,” the foundation’s chair, Kat Lane, said. “And falsely accusing people of things, and sending them letters, and particularly some of our most disadvantaged people … you’d want to make sure you got it absolutely right before doing that.”

If we are to be honest with ourselves, Governments, not private enterprise set tax rates, codes and laws. The failure is on Governments.
If you get lot’s of leaks under your new kitchen sink you blame the plumber that installed it, not your wife for washing up the dishes.

If anyone has broken these laws then I hope they get prosecuted to that Max but so far I’m not aware of any convictions. Maybe the only prosecutions that are made will be against the thieves of the files, or do we give them a pass ?

We should also note that many people that are IN Governments are named.

Ahh, IBM by the looks.
The same geniuses behind the QLD payroll catastrophe and the Census f**kup.
I wonder their ” political contributions “.
I wouldn’t let IBM adjust my TV antenna with their track record!

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